In the criminal justice system, jurors determine guilt or innocence by evaluating the evidence presented to them. If that evidence is incomplete, biased, or incorrect and the innocent are wrongly convicted, jurors are placed in a terrible situation that benefits no one involved. As one juror from the Richard Danziger case stated, “I think any one of us resents the position we were put in. You know, we were made a party to ruining [Danziger’s] life.”
“I think any one of us resents the position we were put in. You know, we were made a party to ruining [Danziger’s] life.”—a Danziger juror
The only direct evidence in the case linking Danziger to the murder of Nancy DePriest in Austin was the confession of his friend Christopher Ochoa—a confession that DNA evidence later revealed to be false. The jurors were not given the full story of how that confession was elicited in a threatening and coercive interrogation that lasted more than twenty hours. Without that context, the confession and testimony from Ochoa led jurors to believe that there was no decision other than to find Danziger guilty.
Another juror from the case said, “I think we should hear how that testimony came about because we had no choice with what we heard….And I was uneasy about the verdict, but if you believed what you were hearing, and it was hard not to, you had to find him guilty.” Another juror agreed and stated, “It would have made a difference to me if I had known that [Ochoa] had sat there for nineteen hours before he was allowed to go home only if he confessed.” It took the confession of the true killer and DNA confirmation years later to finally reach the truth.
One of the Danziger jurors said when she learned of the true killer’s confession and the DNA evidence, “That’s when I really learned that you can make somebody say something or admit to something that’s just not true.” Knowing that they sentenced Danziger to prison based on a false confession has left these jurors with anger and guilt. One juror stated, “I feel guilty for what I’ve done. It makes me sick to my stomach that those two men were destroyed.”
The wrongful convictions of Ochoa and Danziger are a troubling reminder of the importance of giving jurors all the evidence they need in order to reach justice. When custodial interrogations are not recorded, jurors miss essential information they need to effectively and accurately evaluate the reliability of a confession. Had the evidence been thoroughly documented by recording the interrogation, and jurors given the full story, they might have avoided the injustice suffered by the two men, not to mention the millions of dollars in settlements the taxpayers had to pay.
